[WIP] Musculature Anatomy Study

NuZero

Hi folks,

long time lurker and figured if I'm going to do this stuff I might as well get up here and mingle, probably give ya a cheap laugh or two with my "skillz". Anywho, male musculature anatomy, so that my human forms aren't attrocious. Maybe pound this out and start playing with some hard surface modeling for armors (but that is down a ways I think). Character modelers...rip me to pieces...seriously.

Reference:


Tried out zBrush, awesome program, considering I've used rhino and 3dsmax.
Anywho, tried zSpheres, but lost proportions along the way. So opted for a simple armature (the first mistake was arms were down at the sides) and zSketched it all out, proportionally better.

Mesh1


Yeah...armpits are in trouble, not entirely sure how to clean it up without just simply going back to scratch. Won't touch hands/head/feet 'til the body musculature is in there.

Took another swing at revamping the abdominal, smoothed out the shoulders, played with the forearms.

Mesh2


Comments, critiques, and anything you feel like contributing i.e. "you're terrible". Going to be updating this as I get on it.

KyleJensen

Right off that bat I can tell you this will be much easier for you if you have the body in a T-pose or another similar rigging position.

haikai

I think before you get to musculature, it might help to address the overall proportions first. There's a lot of info out there on how to determine the size of body parts in relation to other body parts, and it's important to get a good representation of this scale or else the figure will always look off even if you had a perfect muscle system on there. I recommend transposing the arms up away from the body a bit and just use the Move brush to shift things around. Forget about muscles for now, and step down in subdivisions if that makes it easier.

Once you do get to muscles, forget everything you think you know and try to build it as if you didn't know what anything on the body was and you were seeing it for the first time. This should help you really learn how things are structured without relying on misconceptions about something you take for granted every day.

Also, don't be afraid to scrap the whole thing and start over. It might have seemed like a lot of work to get to this point, but once you get the hang of it, you will be able whip up something better than this in just a few minutes. This stuff will only get easier and faster the more you do it. Good luck!